Jeff Jarvis posted a thread about Ukraine on Twitter. My reply was too long to fit in a tweet, so I'm posting it here. #
I've read your whole thread, and agree -- it's confusing because norms are being busted now, norms of the nuclear deterrent that has been present for all our lives. Putin went first. A nuclear superpower, which Russia is (which until now most seem to have overlooked), is not supposed to provoke another nuclear superpower so blatantly. #
Putin's complaint is he isn't getting the respect a nuclear superpower is entitled to. The expansion of NATO into the former Warsaw Pact was insult #1, but that wasn't enough, NATO then added former states of the USSR. And that wasn't enough, the US promised to add Ukraine to NATO, as I understand it that was one of the final acts of the Bush II presidency, no one noticed here because we were obsessed with the financial collapse of 2008. This happened in a NATO meeting in Bucharest. #
But I think the US and NATO sitting out the war in Ukraine is probably the right thing to do, because either way Ukraine is destroyed, and we're giving up a chance for politics in Russia to stop the next more provocative steps, if we were to intercede before Ukraine is settled. The sanctions will hurt, and I bet the Russians who care know what a debacle this has turned to. Why not take the chance that could work? If we go into the war in Ukraine, the war all of a sudden isn't the war with Ukraine, it's a war with the West. #
Also I have a dream however unrealistic that Ukraine will defeat Russia, and then cross the border into Russia and take a few towns and maybe destroy them just to send a message to the Russian people that Putin is bullshit. #
Last update: Saturday March 5, 2022; 11:17 PM EST.
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